David Benatar may be the world’s most pessimistic philosopher. An “anti-natalist,” he believes that life is so bad, so painful, that human beings should stop having children for reasons of compassion. “While good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place,” he writes, in a 2006 book called “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.” In Benatar’s view, reproducing is intrinsically cruel and irresponsible—not just because a horrible fate can befall anyone, but because life itself is “permeated by badness.” In part for this reason, he thinks that the world would be a better place if sentient life disappeared altogether....
and he lists a lot of the frustrations of first world, affluent materialistic yuppies as the reason behind his screed:
He provides an escalating list of woes, designed to prove that even the lives of happy people are worse than they think. We’re almost always hungry or thirsty, he writes; when we’re not, we must go to the bathroom. We often experience “thermal discomfort”—we are too hot or too cold—or are tired and unable to nap. We suffer from itches, allergies, and colds, menstrual pains or hot flashes. Life is a procession of “frustrations and irritations”—waiting in traffic, standing in line, filling out forms. Forced to work, we often find our jobs exhausting; even “those who enjoy their work may have professional aspirations that remain unfulfilled.” Many lonely people remain single, while those who marry fight and divorce. “People want to be, look, and feel younger, and yet they age relentlessly”: They have high hopes for their children and these are often thwarted when, for example, the children prove to be a disappointment in some way or other. When those close to us suffer, we suffer at the sight of it. When they die, we are bereft.
so why put this in my Africa blog?
Because Benatar was born in South Africa in 1966. He is the head of the philosophy department at the University of Cape Town, where he also directs the university’s Bioethics Centre, which was founded by his father, Solomon Benatar, a global-health expert.
and his father was indeed a big shot at that school in the good old days, and involved in global public health policy.
according to the magazine, the guy is an atheist.
yes, without God you are an isolated individual.
The only reason I don't call the guy a Nazi for pushing nazi ideas is because Solomon and David are ethnically Jewish names.
But are they "Jewish/jewish" or part of the anti religion Jewish types who became rabid socialists/communists and gave conspiracy types ammunition for their own anti semitism?
With God, you are part of a family, and everything that happens works for the good.
and the NewYorker writer, who also has a Jewish name, made sure they passed the monument to the Irish who died in the potato famine... they read a few of the quotes from there, but that didn't get much of a rise from the good professor.
Why no: The professor probably would see the monument as proof why his philosophy (don't have kids: they'll only be miserable) is true, whereas most Irish Americans (and Jews and American Blacks) would see the monument and say: No, it is a warning to philosophers that ideas have consequences.
Because the reason the Irish died is because too many Brits believed in Malthus: that the poor overbred and helping them stay alive only meant more poor people, so don't help them.
so they died: Of starvation, of disease, in "coffin ships" fleeing that land, etc.
and like a lot of Yanks, we remember our heritage.
I checked the author of the magazine article, and he has a Jewish name. They also suffered from bad ideas (the holocaust was based on social Darwinism and Eugenics ideas of the early 20th century):
the population bomb hysteria is not new: if you read Eugenics history, the breeders they disliked back then tended to be the Irish in England, and the Jewish/Irish/Italian and Eastern European immigrants and blacks in the USA). And of course Jews and Gypsies and Slavs in Germany. Especially Jews.
but now, of course, the population control freaks are aiming at Africa.
In other words, not a new idea, but repackaged for affluent types.
Nothing new of course: When I worked in Zimbabwe, every village had a "pill lady" but no safe water or WHO Rehydration fluid until we supplied the money for these things.
And China's one child policy was from Ehrlich's population bomb ideas.
And here in the Philippines, the US pressured us to supply free contraceptives to all women (but one third of our women deliver with untrained birth attendents, one reason for the high mortality.. and even when midwives are "free" they ask for gifts: pre eclampsia is dangerous here, but few get prenatal care. Sigh).
and even the Vatican let a lot of these death promoting population types into their latest conferences.
But the, the joke "is the Pope Catholic?" is, alas, no longer joke.
headsup AnneAlthouse
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